Advice on avoiding some of the pitfalls that can be involved in wine investment. News of wine investment scams. Say no to cold callers. Don't buy investment wines from companies you don't know or haven't checked out.
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wine-searcher

Wine Name:

Vintage:

Saturday, 29 November 2014

(2.12.2015: Please note that this post has now been updated to reflect changes – see end.)

Although only founded in August 2012, Paramount Vintners Ltd offer an impressive list of fine wines as they say at 'competitive prices'. The company's sole director is Croydon-based 28-year-old Marvin Roberts. Following its first set of accounts (31.8.2013) Paramount has a net worth of £12,200. Its registered address is Suite 4B, 43 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London W1J 5FJ, which is rather popular due perhaps to the number of nightingales in the square. There are 41 companies registered at Suite 4B including Africa Health, Tim Johnson Brokerage and UK Dental Tourism.

Paramount Vintners Ltd has three bottles of 1919 Beaune Les Avaux Bouchard Père et Fils (£1500 per bottle) and manages to undercut the price by Fine & Rare Ltd – £1522. It is not clear whether Paramount intend to obtain this 1919 from Fine & Rare or have an alternative source for the 1919 Beaune Les Avaux. I can't imagine that there are many bottles of this wine still available.

Similarly
the 1934 Pommard from Leroy is available from Fine & Rare for £21620
but is listed by Paramount for £21,365. Again Paramount has three bottles available and this is a pattern that repeats itself page after page of their list of wines. Perhaps Paramount's accountant has advised that three is a magic number and that they should try to keep their offer to three bottles or cases to limit the amount of stock the company holds.

Unlike the rest of the fine wine trade Paramount Vintners Ltd

are pushing 2013 en primeur with 7 pages of available wines.

It looks like Marvin Roberts has failed to read The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 (in force from June 2014):

'11. CANCELLATION OF ORDERS

11.1. Once an order has
been accepted and confirmed by Paramount Vintners by the issuance of an
invoice, an order shall be non-cancellable, and is a binding commitment by the
customer to purchase. Such orders may be cancelled by the discretion of Paramount
Vintners only. In the event of non-payment of an invoice within the specified
terms, Paramount Vintners reserves the right to cancel the order a charge a
cancellation fee of up to 20% of the outstanding sum.' Paramount Vintners Ltd – terms & conditions *

Under the new contract law wine bought over the phone or the internet has a 14 day period of cancelleation starting the day after delivery. Only en primeur sales are exempt. Failing to give customers correct information can mean that the cancellation period is extended by a further year.

Paramount Vintners Ltd has an account at London City Bond's Vinothèque** at Burton-on-Trent. Curiously for a company with such an extensive list of stock Vinothèque is misspelt on their website – Vinoteque:

Presumably Marvin Roberts (Paramount Vintners Ltd)

thought this was Vinothèque – it isn't!

Barking – Roberts!

Furthermore the photo Paramount chose to illustrate their 'wine storage' section shows a warehouse at LCB's Barking facility – not Vinothèque. They do, however, offer storage for private customers at £8.28 ex VAT, which sunstantially undercuts the LCB rates. Unless Paramount has cut a very special deal they will be losing money on every case.

I suspect that London City Bond are not impressed! Nor am I....

•••

Update 2nd December 2014

wine-searcher removed Paramount Vintners Ltd from their wine and merchants' listings last Friday.****

Update: 2nd December 2015

The Terms and Conditions relating to the right of cancellation have to amended to reflect the current legislation:

'11. CANCELLATION OF ORDERS
11.1.
Once an order has been accepted and confirmed by Paramount Vintners by
the issuance of an invoice, an order shall be non-cancellable, from 14
days after the date of delivery with the exclusion of wines purchased en
primeur or wines sourced directly for (you) the customer. Such orders
may be cancelled by the discretion of Paramount Vintners only.'

Storage** I understand from Marvin Roberts that Paramount Vintners 'use Vine services through Liv-Ex who store all our stock at LCB Tilbury.'

Pages *** The number of pages of wines offered has reduced: there are now 41 pages of Bordeaux, 24 pages of Burgundy, 4 pages of white Bordeaux and five of Champagne.

wine-searcherParamount Vintners are now listed on wine-searcher with a four-star rating with these comments: 'Responds to emails within a week. Products may not be in stock but can be sourced; fulfilment may take longer.'

Friday, 7 November 2014

It was nearly two weeks ago that a comment from an anonymous source alerted me to the existence of Simon Ford's Electus Wines Ltd:

'Jim, after the Vinance debacle am stupefied to see that Simon Ford has set up a new wine investment firm.'

Following Vinance plc's collapse into liquidation on 17th May 2013, Electus Wines Ltd was set up on 16th July 2013. It has two directors 37-year-old Simon John Ford, based in Ottawa, Canada and 69-year-old Timothy Graham Ford (Simon's father) based in London SE3. Electus Wines Ltd is registered c/o Lester Aldridge LLP, WSP House, 70 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1AF. Timothy Ford is a consultant to Lester Aldridge LLP and is the Chairman - Reading University Pension Fund.See his Linkedin profile.

Electus Wines Ltd gives 33 St. James’s Square. London SW1Y 4JS as their UK contact address. This is a serviced/virtual office building. Electus' website was registered on 23.7.2013 at 33 St.James's Square.

Simon Ford's Electus Wines Ltd does not lack ambition: '…a staging post for the finest wines from the world’s greatest
terroirs, and a good friend to customers seeking exceptional value and
quality wines that “wow”!'

(I fancy a few of Vinance plc's creditors have thought "wow" what happened to my pension pot!)

'In 2002 Simon founded what became the UK’s largest specialist wine investment company...' No mention that this company was Morgan Aston Ford that later became Vinance plc, which went bust in May 2013.

'As
regards general progress, Vinance PLC went from Administration to
Liquidation on 17 May 2013. This is normal where there is money to pay
to creditors and the liquidation facilitates that distribution. We have
paid creditors 15p in the pound so far and expect to pay a second,
smaller distribution in the new year. The total creditor figure is
approximately £15M.

Completely
separately from this, we have returned perhaps £20M worth of wine to
investors, having followed the audit trail and established that they
owned it rather than the company. We remain puzzled as to why other
insolvency practitioners appear not to have always taken this approach
in other cases, where they have sometimes simply sold all the wine, even
that owned by third parties, to put “in the pot.”'

The liquidators are required to report to The Insolvency Service on the conduct of directors of bankrupt companies. It would not be surprising if Herron Fisher's report on the directors of Vinance plc is not entirely complementary. The Insolvency Service can then decide to take action to disqualify someone from being a director.

In February 2013 two of Vinance plc's directors – 59-year-old Simon Earl and 52-year-old Michael Wallen – were sent to prison for their part in running a brothel called Freddy's. Earl got two years and Wallen two years and five months. Details here and here.

Yesterday I emailed Simon Ford some questions about Electus and am grateful for his rapid response:

a) On the
Electus website Lillian Kawasa is described as 'Director and Special Events
Organiser'. However, she is not listed as a director at Companies House and
appears to not to be a director of any UK company. Why then is she described as
a 'director'.

SF: Lillian Kawesa is a director of our Canadian company, as am I.

b) There are
two directors of Electus – yourself and and your father – Timothy Graham Ford.
Why is your father not mentioned on your website? After all he has had a highly
distinguished career both in law and outside – hospitals and Reading
University.

SF: As you correctly say, my father Timothy Ford has enjoyed a long and
distinguished career in the law and continues to enjoy one in public
service; we couldn’t see the relevance of this to our wine buying
audience.

c) 'In 2002
Simon founded what became the UK's largest largest specialist wine investment
company...' Why no mention here of Vinance PLC, which went bust on 17th May
2013 with debts of around £15 million. To date your creditors have received 15p
in the £ and can expect a smaller distribution early in 2015.

SF: 'Our principal business is that of a wine merchant to customers in
Africa, North America, and Asia. Vinance’s business has no relevance to
this.'

From the report: ‘We have asked the directors to
prepare a summary of the company's estimated financial position as at 16
November 2012, which is known as a statement of affairs, but they have not yet
prepared it. We understand that the reason for the delay is that
there is too much uncertainty about the company's financial position and in
particular the wine for which clients have paid.’

‘It was apparent that the company's records were
inadequate and that the position of each individual client was not recorded
properly. The directors could not easily work out which clients were
short of wine they had ordered and paid for or what the extent of the shortfall
was. The clients themselves were unaware that there was any problem,
although many of them thought (and stated) that the company's systems left
something to be desired.’

What measures have you put in place to ensure that
Electus Wines Ltd is not Vinance plc Mark 2 please?

SF: 'Electus and Vinance are two quite unrelated businesses. I will be
putting my business experience at Electus’s service and we will will not
be managing clients’ cellars.

You
may be interested to note that we are only offering our cellar advisory
service, where we help our customers source rare wines and spirits,
because we have been invited to do so by individuals with first hand
experience of Vinance who came to us, not by us seeking them. Indeed I
haven’t approached anyone to buy wine from us, and nor do I intend to.
Our customers have found us with no encouragement at all.'

Simon Ford explains that Electus' principal business will be with customers in Africa, North America, and Asia, so they allegedly would not be interested in the fate of Vinance plc. He may be right. However, if it is relevant that Simon Ford founded a wine investment company in 2002, then it is equally relevant that it went bust in 2013 to the tune of £15 million.

SF: 'my business experience at Electus’s service' – given Vinance's record keeping and the £15 million bust this may not be good news for customers of Electus....

SF: 'I shall be running Electus from Ottawa.'There is nothing on the Electus Wines website (as of 7th November 2014) to indicate that the company is being run from Canada – no Canadian contact details or company number. Indeed it gives the impression that the company is run from London and is UK based:

'Three years in the making, Electus Wines was formed in London in 2013'. Electus Wines Ltd is a UK registered company and its contact details – telephone and address – both are for Central London. I asked Simon Ford whether there was a separate Canadian website but so far have received no reply.

I understand that Simon Ford may soon be offering brass necks as an investment....

Update: 8th November 2014

A response received today from Simon Ford following me asking whether they have a Canadian website:

Dear Jim,

You're most welcome.

I have not completed the process of
assembling the business in Canada for our Canadian company and am completing
new site content including addresses etc and I'll let you know when it's
finished if you like?

I’m very keen to
bring a fresh approach with our cellar advisory service. It will be a new
business model never before seen in the marketplace. As I said in my last email
we're not managing customers' cellars, rather we intend to market our
knowledge, experience and know-how regarding identifying value which we have
learned over the last decade at work in the market and which has proven hugely
successful as well with 5 year average price growth of 130%. As your recent
posts on the Premier Cru / Cult Wine story show, even the longest established
wine managers aren't immune to problems bound up in these managed business
models and it may be the case that we're coming to the end of an era. We may be
seeing the last days of these Aston Lovell type front and back end commission
outfits, perhaps even of wine funds with their performance fees and management
fees, and, who knows, maybe even of merchants and their margins as well? In the
wake of Premier Cru's collapse there is certainly much to ponder for us all. We
will certainly avoid repeating oft-made mistakes with our cellar advisory
service approach and bring real evolution to the market. You will appreciate I
am constrained by commercial confidentiality presently, but once we start
accepting customers it would be great to think that you might be able to help
us reach wine investors who look to you for guidance with news of our new
business model because it will be of real interest to them. I think you'll be
very interested in our novel approach too. I shall keep you informed of developments
at any rate if you wish? There is much still ponder but when it is completed
our new model will represent true evolution and real value for customers. For
example, Simon Staples of Berry's has predicted major bidding wars for first
growths in the coming decades - he's even gone on record stating Lafite 2005
may be changing hands at £10 million a case by 2058 - do you think this might
happen? How do you see the market developing? And will investors be trading
Chinese and Indian fine wines on Cavex in a few years do you think?

I'm very much enjoying the move to the
merchant side of the market; much more interesting and enjoyable. Please let me
know if you can recommend some entry-level Loire wines for our African and
Chinese customers. So far we've been focussing on the S.W. France of course, as
pricing there is most suitable for our customers' purposes. We’re always
looking for more great examples of French terrors and you obviously know a
thing or two about the Loire region. Let me know if you’d like to help us?

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